100 Million Yearshttps://100my.wordpress.com
(after the end of history) • a post-apocalyptic, psionic, fungal, steampunk–dinosaurian setting for DnD • currently being played in 3 campaigns in Brooklyn, NYWed, 12 Jul 2017 19:11:15 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/4537e6dcca401ec84ff9655c77dd097f?s=96&d=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.wp.com%2Fi%2Fbuttonw-com.png100 Million Yearshttps://100my.wordpress.com
Where is Carcosa?https://100my.wordpress.com/2012/07/15/where-is-carcosa/
https://100my.wordpress.com/2012/07/15/where-is-carcosa/#respondSun, 15 Jul 2012 20:46:10 +0000http://100my.wordpress.com/?p=1271]]>Where do we find “Carcosa” (concept, site, events, inhabitants, tech) on earth, or on our particular erath (the desertified/desecrated future earth)?

Bierce intends his ambiguous Carcosa to occupy a position on a future earth—a Rip Van Winkle city—but most interpreters today place it on an earthlike exoplanet. (The current definitive interpretation is GeoffreyMcKinney’s.)

In 100 Million Years, “Carcosa” as a site of weird/Lovecraftian/paleopunk action could be in one or more locations; it could be distributed from the beginning or following the fragmentation of some Carcosa state/stratum within the essentially missing 100 million years of history that apophatically define the game.

But where are these various colored men and their ruins of Snake Man and alien technology hiding? Wouldn’t they stick out? How to integrate one’s own unique ideas with another set in a way that preserves the essence and playfulness of both…

The West – Humans in the mantid-/fomori-dominated West may have lost civilization but preserved a grim independence, in scattered pockets. Here, the Carcosan men have to face not only aliens and shoggoths, but also the mantid slavers.

“Lemuria” (large island far south of Pala) – Isolated, distant, this island, purposefully left under-thought, could house all of “Carcosa” and allow for relatively easy integration into any campaign on Pala.

Luna – All we know about Luna and her inhabitants comes from a few lists and are psychedelic maps. Perhaps the Far Side or a forgotten plateau on the Near Side provides an undisturbed site for Carcosan anti-culture to have developed.

Tsune – The other moon, never terraformed… by the Tephnians. Isn’t it possible the Snake Men and or aliens flew here 5000 years ago and seeded the misshapen sickle-rock with life, somehow setting up analogs for atmosphere, protective ozone, foodbase, gravity—perhaps even the very beginnings (hugely misinterpreted) of culture?

Asmaar, the Unsea – Pala is huge and underpopulated. Isn’t it possible that a fairly large group of posthumans have simply remained hidden, far below or atop an isolated plateau in the middle of the vast central desert? These Carcosans would be much “drier” than the ones in McKinney’s opus, but similarly savage.

Northwest Latura – Beyond the desert, at the edge of the oxygen-poisoned Nusea, perhaps there is a band of inhabitable forest where Carcosan men dwell, hunted by megafauna and aliens—and by incursions of Laturan imperial forces searching for archaetech, or for “sorcerers” (untrained hell scientists)…

I alluded to this earlier, but I find the most interesting solution to be that “Carcosa” is spread across all of these options. If the PCs were to somehow “hunt down” Carcosa and her inhabitants, I would perhaps roll twice and distribute the action across the ruined earth.

And I’d throw in these guys, whom I’ve been calling the Plague Church:

This image is not by me but is tremendously scary. #LoveIt. Makes me think of Carcosa immediately, of ritual murder… #Shudder.

]]>https://100my.wordpress.com/2012/07/15/where-is-carcosa/feed/0ChronolectHuman_Plague_ChurchCoincidencehttps://100my.wordpress.com/2012/07/14/coincidence/
https://100my.wordpress.com/2012/07/14/coincidence/#respondSat, 14 Jul 2012 18:31:43 +0000http://100my.wordpress.com/?p=1281]]>There are no coincidences in DnD. Everything you say can come back to haunt the PCs. Half-remembered names, halfdescript places, lies, stutters, misreadings of texts—all may prove important. It is up to you.

#DeepThoughts

#DnDAphorisms

]]>https://100my.wordpress.com/2012/07/14/coincidence/feed/0ChronolectPhilosophy; the approach to ancient textshttps://100my.wordpress.com/2012/07/13/philosophy-the-approach-to-ancient-texts/
https://100my.wordpress.com/2012/07/13/philosophy-the-approach-to-ancient-texts/#respondFri, 13 Jul 2012 18:25:06 +0000http://100my.wordpress.com/?p=1279]]>I was talking to a friend recently who was amazed to learn I have read little and have little interest in reading Plato. Isn’t Plato something you have to read to do philosophy?

I said you should simply read the writers in whom you’re deeply interested, and then read the writers who inspired them; this genealogical approach will always lead you back to Plato, via certain bottlenecks (Derrida, Heidegger, Kant, Hegel).

For example, I read Bataille and Stiegler because I am interested in sex, the body, limits, the future, technology, and prehistory, especially early human cognition. This led me to need to understand much better Nietzsche (Bataille’s immediate precursor), Heidegger (Stiegler’s foundation), and, in the end, Plato.

I found nothing strange about starting from a point of sincere contemporary engagement (how will biotechnology change the “human,” whatever it is?) and moving backwards toward the first inklings of wonder that would concatenate to build the contemporary.

This is how, I think, DnD and other complex mental games may be approached: Play what you like, and then ask, how did we get to this point of complexity? How else have these issues (combat, magic/psi, skills, etc.) been addressed in the past?

I believe the teaching of history benefits from the same inversion: Proceed from situations backward via the contingencies that gave rise to them.

In this way, we maintain curiosity at every step instead of, working from an initial feeling of “I guess I should know this shit”-ness, losing steam halfway, just before some critical insight.

My high school reading of philosophy stopped here: I started with famous names and proceeded up—learning nothing, abandoning Wittgenstein and Nietzsche (whose words I loved) out of exhaustion. Who cared about this world picture stuff, or the Dionysian? I needed some type of hook to delve so deeply into abstraction.

Years later, in my last two years of college, I would find this hook in Barthes, Derrida, and Foucault, and even more strongly in Deleuze, who led me to Bataille. We come full circle.

Only after this journey was completed (and other journeys begun) did I resume playing DnD in earnest, with others engaged abstraction-delving.

Coincidence?

]]>https://100my.wordpress.com/2012/07/13/philosophy-the-approach-to-ancient-texts/feed/0ChronolectBackup PCshttps://100my.wordpress.com/2012/07/12/backup-pcs/
https://100my.wordpress.com/2012/07/12/backup-pcs/#respondThu, 12 Jul 2012 18:23:41 +0000http://100my.wordpress.com/?p=1277]]>Deep GMing thought: Why don’t all players roll up two PCs, possibly antagonistic but definitely in the same world-historical milieu and even, fuck it, the same social scene? Then, when Thing 1 dies, Thing 2 jumps right in, bam, no waiting, perhaps some mourning, probably some retributive ass-kicking, definitely some shaking-up of the current power dynamics of the game (unless the Things in question are identical twins or some horseshit).

Just sayin.

This image is awesome and not by me. These characters are obviously tremendous bad-asses. Your players should make up characters such as these.

Just sayin. Again.

]]>https://100my.wordpress.com/2012/07/12/backup-pcs/feed/0ChronolectHuman_Mercenaries1Iconica: big Magic + awesome design – rules tweaks = opportunity for creative misusehttps://100my.wordpress.com/2012/07/11/iconica-big-magic-awesome-design-rules-tweaks-opportunity-for-creative-misuse/
https://100my.wordpress.com/2012/07/11/iconica-big-magic-awesome-design-rules-tweaks-opportunity-for-creative-misuse/#respondThu, 12 Jul 2012 01:15:08 +0000http://100my.wordpress.com/?p=1159]]>We played a bit of Iconica and found it stunning, visually and linguistically, but imperfect rules-wise. Certain cards are just too strong, and with so few cards in play (you choose to field 3 of 40 basic characters), you notice every bump in the balance of the various characters.

That said, this game (which we’ve affectionately taken to calling “big Magic”) could serve up a very interesting quickset of NPCs for DnD. The hit points and damage more or less work for a mid- or high-level game, and the bigness/iconic look of the cards may serve well when they are whipped out—BAM!—fux with this:

Just a thought. Nice indie game; amazing design. We await more cards/options.

Why the fuck are you a sorcerer? Slime-covered tentacular space gods killed a robot that was attacking my mother. Then the space gods killed and consumed my mother. #ObviouslyIHadTo worship them and beg to learn their terrifying secrets…

===

I’m totally making the PCs play random Carcosan characters at some point… In the mean time, in closing, here’s a thought from Jim Stutz that pretty much sums up why RPG bloggers have had Carcosa fever ever since Geoffrey McKinney’s excellent book dropped:

What we end up with are dinosaur-riding sorcerous cavemen exploring ancient ruins and pursuing the Greys for their nifty rocket launchers while being pursued in turn by Nyarlathotep and some undead mummies. Why? Fuck you, that’s why.

]]>https://100my.wordpress.com/2012/07/10/carcosan-character-generation-document-metal/feed/0ChronolectStarbuckshttps://100my.wordpress.com/2012/07/09/starbucks/
https://100my.wordpress.com/2012/07/09/starbucks/#respondMon, 09 Jul 2012 17:41:05 +0000http://100my.wordpress.com/?p=1246]]>What is the Starbucks of the post-apocalypse like? I don’t mean the grimy, scary cantina—PCs always assume they’re in the grimiest of cantinas. I mean the place normal people go for a kelp lager or a coffee-like algae drink.

This is partially what DnD needs as a whole—normalcy (background) against which to set action (foreground)—in some ways, Die Hard than Conan—or at least the camel-punching, merchant/day-job/background noise of Conan.

I don’t of course think Die Hard itself provides the right elements (though it does give the right feeling); the question is, in your given fantasy/sci-fi world, where is Starbucks? Target? Walmart?

In what ways do these equivalencies not exist? Any given equivalency may be boring or so incongruous that it, far from remaining boring, sparks a new adventure.

Ideas for “normal” postfuture locations to serve as backdrops for PC action:

The algae farms – Shallow green lakes monitored by mercenary guards, all of whom are jacked up (+5 Init) on hyper-juice algae

There is a term for those humans who dwell in the mostly gmothi-controlled mountains of northeast Pala—all the small plateaus and old ranges between the swamps of Arakha and the low, quan- and sahaguin-infested plains of Djenma. These humans, who have gone back to the wild in the eyes of the citydwellers, are called Tattered People. They wear horrible fungal bark masks and ad hoc shawls and tunics made of strips of flesh and shards of chitin, sewn together at random and stinking, often inhabited by entirely novel microbial and fungal colonies.

These colonies, in fact, can direct the actions of the Tattered People, leeching chemicals into the blood that influence emotion and desire (as cats, extinct in the future, may control our brains today). Sometimes driven to eat the flesh of gmothi and other sents by their microbial–fungal shawl-colonies (shawlonies), the Tattered People are feared and hated by the gmothi tribes, and viewed as “demons” by the Barbari tribes of humans who inhabit the cool lowlands beyond the northern coastal ranges.

Tattered People themselves tend to run Bloodthirsty/ADD and organize themselves into hermetically sealed clans or familial units, depending on the total number of their cohort. These clans or families fight one another more or less constantly, but seek amputation and ingestion instead of death. (When making called shots to the digit, nose, or ear, Tattered Person barbarians only suffer -2, not -4. Crits have a 1 in 4 chance of slicing off a digit/nose/ear.)

Thus, the Tattered People are frequently missing fingers, toes, ears, noses, tongues, limbs, and random patches of skin. They particularly venerate barbarian bravos who have won many battles but lost their noses: These Noseless create a music by whistling through the holes in their faces, and they never lose morale. Even seeing them calls for a Sanity check (failure means losing d6 SAN).

Gun that shoots nails – functions as a short-range area of effect weapon, cone shaped, damage deteriorating every five feet from 3d4-3, 2d4-2, d4-1, 1

Wooden sword covered in horrible flesh-melting fungus

Huge metal spoon (?)

Teeth, sharpened

Teeth, someone else’s – worn as weaponized dentures or “superteeth” (the proper ethnological term), 1 in 4 chance of infecting someone bit by them with a horrible disease

Foul smell

Tattered People culture is rich in many respects, however. Their fungal liquors are considered the best in northern Pala, and their music is pleasing to many aficionados, after the initial SAN loss.

What do the Tattered People want? They worship the constant consuming re-consuming of the self, and the mutation of the mind and body. They want to embrace and enforce mutation in its most abstract. They want you…

]]>https://100my.wordpress.com/2012/07/08/mountain-tribes/feed/0Chronolect1241718063-mountain-person-1187x950Five new sexeshttps://100my.wordpress.com/2012/07/07/five-new-sexes/
https://100my.wordpress.com/2012/07/07/five-new-sexes/#respondSat, 07 Jul 2012 21:34:11 +0000http://100my.wordpress.com/?p=1237]]>This post—adding five new sexes (or genders*) to your RPG campaign—is phenomenal. I love this rigorous creativity. How can we make DnD really new, truly weird, actually philosophically curious? Add some muhfuckin sexes to the world. How basic. How hilarious. How… usable.

I mean, imagine meeting one of your PCs meeting a pretty [type of being the PC is attracted to] in a grimy cantina. The pretty NPC and PC make out. The next week, the PCs are back in the grimy cantina. The NPC is pregnant… from the PC’s saliva. The NPC, a spemale, wants the PC to pay up for child support. Hilarity ensueth.

Richard’s Dystopain Pokeverse is full of these gems. Check it out.

*A note on nomenclature: The author calls these new “sexes” as opposed to “genders.” These ideas are all for novel biological child-conceiving processes, so I think, from a purely scientific perspective, it is safe to refer to them as “sexes.”

If you disagree, many apologies! I ain’t trying to start nothing. I admit: Biological spemales may be “male” or “female” from our human/cultural perspectives.

Any game that claims to feature “action-science, robots, angry talking dinosaurs, and high weirdness” is getting picked up.

This underscores the need for good d20 rules for robot and android characters…

]]>https://100my.wordpress.com/2012/07/06/atomic-robo-rpg-sounds-pretty-neat/feed/0Chronolectmeme-internet-robotsIdeas for posts to develop in the futurehttps://100my.wordpress.com/2012/07/05/ideas-for-posts-to-develop-in-the-future/
https://100my.wordpress.com/2012/07/05/ideas-for-posts-to-develop-in-the-future/#respondThu, 05 Jul 2012 18:05:46 +0000http://100my.wordpress.com/?p=1214]]>I have been busy doing real-life shite, so fewer posts have been made. My B! On a happier and less determinate note, here are some ideas I may/may not pursue in the near future:

Fun stuff

Moon species (the new ones), converted from simple d6 stats to full d20 DnD/100my stats:

LAMMASSU – Stats for this class of mech may actually come up in-game, very soon, so…

PAZUZU

NERGAL

Bumblebee

Pincer

Conversions from other games I like:

Legal sitch – Is it legal to post random d20 conversions for games whose wonderful contents I had no part in creating? Perhaps with clear caveats?

Hollow Point – This game was so fun to read, so… blah to play. The creation of 5 one-time-use quirks works wonderfully, and the tone of the game feels right. But the stats are irritatingly vague once combat begins, so combat drags, compared to DnD (or White Wolf, or d6 RPGs, or… any successful RPG). Still, there has to be a way to borrow some of the fun 5-bad-ass-stats tone of HP for other systems. The new-each-game quirks (lucky bullet, obsession with someone, favorite food) are an easy place to begin.

Morphs – Many elements of EP impress me. The art is monumental, Lovecraftian, paranoia-inducing. The writing is clear and confident; the creators obviously have a wonderful sense of their game world. But nothing beats the different biological, pod-grown, synthetic, and information-only “morphs,” the equivalents of races/species in other RPGs. The coolest may be the slitheroid, a freaking skull-headed metal snake. The sample slitheroid-morph character in the EP rulebook has an 8-ball painted on his head. #BadAss.

Factions, motivation, rep, moxy, and rez in DnD – These rules systems within EP all feel modular and portable into other games. I particularly think moxy (similar to grit or FATE points gained from aspects) in DnD.

Exsurgent fauna (nanoswarms and more!) – These are easy enough to convert. One element of EP I love is that the exsurgent virus is neither purely biological nor digital; all matter and energy (anything that can be represented as information) can be infected… I love this nuance; it makes the exsurgent virus close to the vague notion of “psi” in sci-RPGs, but more threatening—recalling at once both the “gray goo” nano-apocalypse scenario and the mystical early excitement of quantum physics (the world is not marble; the world is chaos; matter–energy, particle–wave, void–field…).

Apocalypse World class conversions – Someone has almost certainly already done this on the labyrinthine AW forums… if only I could find the relevant thread.

Experience in Apocalypse World – No gamer I’ve spoken with thinks encouraging PCs to have sex with one another is a good idea—not because sex isn’t great; it is!—but because players want sex, while player characters want secret powers, weapons, prestige, gold, armies, etc. This isn’t an attempt to reduce the great game to Monopoly, just an observation from years of GMing. That all said, the fundamental shift in AW is away from “experience = amount of badness killed” to “experience = amount you understand about yourself, via interacting with others [mainly other PCs].” Which is aaaaawesome.

100 M. Y. development

100 M. Y.character sheet

Sample characters for each 100 M. Y. species and class

]]>https://100my.wordpress.com/2012/07/05/ideas-for-posts-to-develop-in-the-future/feed/0ChronolectIn honor of the Fourth… an American adventurehttps://100my.wordpress.com/2012/07/04/in-honor-of-the-fourth-an-american-adventure/
https://100my.wordpress.com/2012/07/04/in-honor-of-the-fourth-an-american-adventure/#respondWed, 04 Jul 2012 16:43:06 +0000http://100my.wordpress.com/?p=1238]]>Time travel back to the Founding Fathers days: The PCs gotta help Thomas Paine, who asks to be called T-Pain, free four slaves owned by President Thomas Jefferson, who everyone calls T-Jax, who is secretly a steam-powered/partly wooden cyborg with the powers of magnetism, who is on vacation back at Monticello for a minute.

T-Pain has the negative trait: Talks angrily about freedom nonstop, even if in hiding. T-Jax has a pair of stonepunk mecha-owls called Coriolanus and Flavius. Also: Tobaccorks (botanical orcs bioengineered using horticulture… and evil magic). T-Pain has a shotgun that shoots irradiated red, white, and blue Freedom Chunks stolen from Ben Franklin.

The four slaves, John, August, Grant, and Robert, are friends of T-Pain from back in the dizzle. They are skilled with farm tools; Robert is also a cardshark; Grant can hack into steampunk robots. They are currently in the “brig” (torture wing) of Monticellar (the underground/evil/living part of Monticello).

T-Jax’s daughters, Utopia and She-Who-Walks-Farthest (both of whom are suspiciously caramel-toned) are back from boarding school in France just in time to help the PCs navigate their way around their Papa’s underground mansion… but one of them is a double agent for a Jeffersonian éminence grise who seeks to supplant T-Jax as Shadow Emperor of Early Capital, or whatever.

Maybe Monticellar shoots into space as the PCs wend through its depths, trying to find a way out before Flavius eats one of their eyes…?

YOU HAVE ALMOST SAVED THE PRINCESS SHARON FROM THE WICKED “DOOM LORD”! WILL YOU DEFEAT THE “DOOM LORD” OR WILL YOU DISCOVER FIVE DIFFERENT MOSTLY-WACKY “ENDINGS”?

controls:
arrow keys to move
z to swing sword
x to shoot arrows

#Perfect.

Something about the old Zelda games continually begs for DnD-ization: Save the princess. Defeat the vaguely demonic bad dude. In between, explore the bizarchitecture, picking up weird (and mostly kind of lame) magic items.

Has anyone made a Carcosan Zelda clone?

]]>https://100my.wordpress.com/2012/07/03/game-win-condition/feed/0Chronolectwin-condition 2012-02-17 08-26-36-54North Pala map: hexplained!https://100my.wordpress.com/2012/07/02/north-pala-map-hexplained/
https://100my.wordpress.com/2012/07/02/north-pala-map-hexplained/#respondTue, 03 Jul 2012 00:35:18 +0000http://100my.wordpress.com/?p=1183]]>Okay, so months ago, I posted this map of the northeast corner of Pala, called Djenma—a wildland at the edge of the edge, the limit of Fjatal, and thus of all of Pala. Beyond: Sharkman-filled seas. Before: The vastnesses of Fjatal, land of the gmothi and the human barbari—lawless peoples, jerks, and loud-talkers. In this post, I will elaborate somewhat on the area. COMMENCE FUTURE-POLITICKIN’—

Hjalax – Gmothi badlands. Densely inhabited (compared to other gmothi tribelands) and relatively fertile (by grim gmothi standards), Hjalax (“HYA-lax”) is off-limits to non-gmothi, though this doesn’t prevent intrepid Vennari and Arakhan traders from trying to cross the northern beaches, or begging for protection from the sahaguin when those shark-men emerge from the waters at night. The gmothi are judicious in their granting of favors, especially those martial in nature… Huge, shovel-headed saurians walk the beaches, scooping up sand and the crabs that make their home there. Giant albino crabs occasionally wash up onto the beaches in large cohorts, as do chuul (lobstrosities). The gmothi eat these foes, when possible.

The Floor of Ulshun – These bogs are filled with small, wild tribes of barbari humans, orphaned gmothi, and anti-Arakhan varanids and scincids. Travelers here are frequently harried by small cadres of highwaymen. These sociopaths have spent so long in the swamp, avoiding the gmothi tribes to the north and east, that they have no real ethic beyond survival. Many of the varanids and scincids are descendants of heroes from the Second Unhuman War who were stranded here, lost and harassed by the barbari, when the humans and imperial Arakhans retreated west, just before Vennar signed a ceasefire with the Federation. The bogs themselves are beautiful, featuring some of the largest trees left on Pala. Ceratopsians and hadrosaurids are common here, as are huge spiders, some of whom have learned to manipulate simple human technologies, such as levers (such as gun triggers).

Djenma proper: Kingdom of the Spikers – Led by Zhale the Traitor (his name is false, simply implying “of Zhalay”), the Spikers are a group of powerful, independent-minded warriors who defected from the elite Zhalavane Heresiarchal Guard (ZHG) in order to set up an agrarian–piratocratic new state in the foothills of the Ulshun Alpines. The Spikers gave up on the dream of a unified human Djenma after Dralah’s defeat of Zhalay and the acquisition of much of eastern Djenma by the shark-men. In their own land, the paranoid Spikers are the absolute law. They ride restored motobikes across the wastes, frequently fighting gmothi tribes who feel the Spikers are usurping their land. The entire Spiker population is maybe 30,000 humans, ha’-quan, and varanids, of whom only maybe 6000 are able to fight on short notice.

Djenma proper: Zhalay – Population 77,000, Zhalay (not pictured, because it moves) is the “capital” of and only real city in Djenma. It is usually found between the Kingdom of the Spikers and Center Djen. Ruled by a heresiarchy of 20 or so ancient creeps who worship Zhzhangh (the primal pissing-into-the-desert-at-night Old One), Zhalay drifts from waste-plain to waste-plain on the back of a huge copper frisbee with tremendous tank treads, crushing everything underneath, sucking up water and minerals for fuel, further scarifying the land. All Zhalavanes (the people of Zhalay) hate the ha’-quan Technarks, but many hold a soft spot for the rebel Spikers. (More on Zhalavane names.)

Djenma proper: Technarky of the Ha’-Quan – Can humans and quan mate? Apparently, some cohorts can. Mostly, they choose not to. In this weird corner of Pala, however, the quan have been aggressively breeding with humans, trying to get back upwet (on land). The Technarky is a scheme by the insane leaders of Zhalay to defeat Dralah: Fifty years ago, they turned the quan toward the notion of a ha’-quan state, one amenable both to the quan (in search of former glory) and humans (in search of an appreciation of the sea, and of an alliance against the sahaguin). Now the Technarks, thanks to the discovery of a pod machine (meaning pod-human manufacturing machine), have rapidly populated the west of Djenma with ha’-quan, all of whom are amenable to the idea of a state there, against Dralah. The Zhalavane plan, however, is seen as a failure by its architects, as the ha’-quan are rapidly outnumbering the human ambassadors in their lands; they could one day even switch allegiance and help Dralah unite Djenma in a reign of enduring terror…

Djenma proper: Center Djen – Still inhabited mostly by gmothi tribes who fight both Dralah and the “orthodox” Djenmans (the Zhalavanes and their various mercenaries, including some corrupt gmothi tribes), Center Djen is a warzone, littered with landmines and nanoswarm devourer traps… Few “live” here except those gmothi who have claimed it for (in their words) millions of years. The Zhalavanes have already mined it free of heavy metals and carbon and drained the aquifer. Dralah has already had most of the remaining humans loyal to Zhalay nerve-gassed or irradiated. Thus Center Djen is home to many hungry, lonely mutants…

Dralah’s Kingdom – Seventy-five years ago, in the wake of the Second Unhuman War—which had reached even the distant gmothi tribes and the horrible archaecity of Zhalay—one heresiarch (already a famous embezzler, arms dealer, and rapist) and his family rebelled and stole most of the great Weapons of Terror from Zhalay, retreating toward Sussaru. Dralah ruled for several decades before passing, in his last breaths, the “Rogue’s Throne” to his son, who adopted his father’s name. The current Dralah is a pale, long-haired technobarbarian bent on “unifying” Djenma by wiping out the gmothi and quan, recapturing the Satrapies from the sahaguin, and executing the heresiarchs of Zhalay. Rumors:

Dralah has made a deal with the Federation

Dralah has made a deal with the Fang Monks of Sussaru

Dralah has a terrible new weapon that allows him to mass-mind control sents

Dralah has a terribly old weapon that will “burn the sea” for hundreds of miles out if activated, vaporizing thousands of sahaguin, quan, chuul, and other aquatic sents and demi-sents (and a much smaller number of ammon)

Sussaru-the-Ancient – Ruled by the Fang Monks… Utterly cut off from the rest of Pala…

Sahaguin Satrapies – Yes, the shark-men here seem to be learning, to be developing what could be mistaken for dry territorial or even political ambitions… The Satrapies are each inhabited by ex-Zhalavane humans (Djenmans, they call themselves) who are left alone by their shark-man masters so long as they do not fight. At night, the sahaguin come farther and farther into Djenman, hunting toward Zhalay, toward the easternmost Spiker encampments, toward unsuspecting gmothi tent-cities (always under watch by the wayfarers, of course). The Satraps are reportedly amphibious, intelligent mutant sahaguin who have trained their beastly cousins to wear primitive, temporary rebreathers fashioned from water-tight algae-skin sacks and primitive mollusc-powered pumps. The Zhalavanes would pay anything to reclaim the west from the sharks—to destroy not only the Satraps, but their shadowy masters back in Sahaguinta, down deep off the continental shelf…

]]>https://100my.wordpress.com/2012/07/02/north-pala-map-hexplained/feed/0ChronolectNorthPala1Neurological damage!https://100my.wordpress.com/2012/07/01/neurological-damage/
https://100my.wordpress.com/2012/07/01/neurological-damage/#commentsSun, 01 Jul 2012 15:33:14 +0000http://100my.wordpress.com/?p=1219]]>This list of real neurological problems is fantastic… and creepy. Definitely employing it presently in my 100 M. Y. games, and incorporating it into the official list of effects of SAN loss, radiation damage, and—natch—blows to the head. Here are a few faves:

Acalculia – Inability to perform elementary arithmetic operations, to count or compare which of two numbers is larger.

Dyschronometria – Inability to accurately estimate the amount of time that has passed.

Neurogenic pruritus – Damage to the somatosensory pathways or cortex creates a persistent itch somewhere on the body, an itch that simply will not go away. Sufferers have a hard time not to scratch the itch.

Witzelsucht – An uncontrollable tendency to make puns, tell inappropriate jokes or pointless stories at inconvenient moments. The person finds these intensely amusing.

]]>https://100my.wordpress.com/2012/07/01/neurological-damage/feed/1ChronolectDark gourmandhttps://100my.wordpress.com/2012/06/30/dark-gourmand/
https://100my.wordpress.com/2012/06/30/dark-gourmand/#respondSat, 30 Jun 2012 15:25:33 +0000http://100my.wordpress.com/?p=1216]]>This is a nice short adventure hook I may use; shoutout to RunePunk:

An evil alchemist/mutagenicist/drugdealer/turophile gets everybody addicted to his habit-forming, super stinky cheese. The PCs have to find this guy and mess him up… or extort him for a cut… or use the quasi-cheese (‘pata-cheese?) to develop some cure for some terrible disease…

Dude’s hench-things include a mutagenic imp/familiar, several “Remnants” (reanimated/steam-cyborg human husks, scraight Frankenthugs), and I would add some mufuckin cheese-hijacked brain rats.

TWIST: Perhaps a nephilite warren is also involved, trafficking the cheese in exchange for blood.

SETTING: Could be any city; in my setting, I would make it Keramis (already stocked with mutants, nephilites, and brain rats). I would make the cheese a potential cure for the hapless Silk Men (= dying of superfuture leprosy).

I mean, that is just fucking distracting. Snake through the legs. #Metaphor. Just Photoshop this at 25% opacity over any fantasy dungeon map and be like, “This is what Ye Olde Towne Mappe-Makyr hath found for ye, regarding the in-famous Oubliette et Donjon d’Serpentes Terrible. Deal withe itte.” Or whatever. (I assume everyone who is not playing superfuture DnD talks like this, but I am unwilling to do the empirical research to find out.)

]]>https://100my.wordpress.com/2012/06/29/maps-you-give-your-pcs-should-look-like-this/feed/1Chronolectarticle-1347140-0CC27D3A000005DC-859_634x503Gameshttps://100my.wordpress.com/2012/06/28/games/
https://100my.wordpress.com/2012/06/28/games/#respondThu, 28 Jun 2012 16:32:56 +0000http://100my.wordpress.com/?p=1205]]>If fictions allow us to access, however indirectly, parts of our unconscious that remain otherwise not only obscure, bit even perverse—that root against us—then perhaps roleplaying games allow us all the better purchase in these dark regions, for in them we do not guide ourselves, or not entirely, but must distribute the work of world-making and life-living socially, to the Other.

Games challenge the whole: Each player becomes the master of what is only a partial flow. The gamemaster too is one plateau or resource, not the mythical Author. His inventions double back and change themselves, Hyde to Jekyll, in the hands of his players.

]]>https://100my.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/inspiration-vampire-ladies/feed/1Chronolectreginald-birchs-ladyvampire-girl-by-w-m-bergerInspiration: moon hoaxeshttps://100my.wordpress.com/2012/06/17/inspiration-moon-hoaxes/
https://100my.wordpress.com/2012/06/17/inspiration-moon-hoaxes/#respondSun, 17 Jun 2012 21:26:02 +0000http://100my.wordpress.com/?p=1194]]>Check out the story of the Great Moon Hoax of 1835 >>

This shit was tremendous, par.

[Using their new super telescope,] scientists saw herds of brown quadrupeds similar to bison, a goat “of a bluish lead color,” and “a strange amphibious creature, of a spherical form, which rolled with great velocity across the pebbly beach.

…However, the highlight of this extract was the discovery of the first sign of intelligent, though primitive, lunar life — the biped beaver. These extraordinary beavers walked on two feet and bore their young in their arms. They lived in huts “constructed better and higher than those of many tribes of human savages.” And signs of smoke above the huts of the beavers indicated that these advanced animals had even mastered the use of fire.

…The scientists discovered human-like creatures living inside a ring of red hills they dubbed the “Ruby Colosseum.” Unlike earth-bound humans, these creatures were “covered, except on the face, with short and glossy copper-colored hair, and had wings composed of a thin membrane, without hair, lying snugly upon their backs.”

]]>https://100my.wordpress.com/2012/06/17/inspiration-moon-hoaxes/feed/0Chronolect1835_sun_rubycolosseummoonhoaxWarforged in hard(er) sci-fihttps://100my.wordpress.com/2012/06/15/warforged-in-harder-sci-fi/
https://100my.wordpress.com/2012/06/15/warforged-in-harder-sci-fi/#respondFri, 15 Jun 2012 19:42:01 +0000http://100my.wordpress.com/?p=1158]]>(Are just robots, right? I mean, minus magic, a magical robot is a robot? Or am I missing some property of ? Anyway.)

In a forum about DnD Next, one commenter asks, are we forgetting to ask “the most important question of all… Will there be warforged!?”

(Nice interrobang.)

The point, I think, is: What will be carried over from the various DnD worlds/themes (Eberron/magic–steampunk, FR/classic high-magic fantasy, Dark Sun/ruined world–low fantasy, Planescape/unique, Ravenloft/Goth, etc.) into the actual 5e rules? Do we need warforged to be a base species? Or Defiler to be a base class?

It’s a good question. One commenter worries in jest that warforged (a popular character race, I’m guessing?) will be replaced by “dogborns (hairy humoids [sic] with a puppy’s face),” which is hilarious.

A longer, more direct taking-on of this challenging question is this, from another commenter:

I know that whatever they do with certain history and major event decisions aren’t going to make *everyone* happy; there’s always going to be some people who are unhappy if Lord Whoever is dead and some people who are unhappy if he’s not, and consider it as integral a part of the setting as “Dark Sun is a harsh, deserty world where divine power as it is tradtionally understood is absent”, but I think you can get the basics in there. I don’t think the settings should be modular—too much work and confusion for too little gain—but fortunately opinion on what belongs in each setting I think are in general less varied than opinions about how the game mechanics work.

Lurve it. I agree that “core rules” or whatever you call them probably need to be agnostic of any particular world, and amenable to all of them (perhaps with slight alterations).

For our part, we’re mostly concerned with building cool rules for our setting, knowing that some of them will be easier for other GMs to use/rework in their own games. A species or mechanically self-contained class is fairly modular/transportable, however, which is why I’m confident our material will be useful for others (once we get it together, edited, and put it up into the pages on the nav above, that is).

Anyway, the question stands: Is 5e the-rules-system going to nod toward generic fantasy setting? Will this new system keep warforged and other magic-robots and [insert your favorite weirdo class/race here] in the core/basic version? What do “most players” want, and is this even worth finding out?

No doubt the Wizards themselves are deep in colloquy over this question as we speak.

The set-up for Super Jail! is that perfect blend of simplicity and repeatability that makes for a perfect one-off or series adventure within DnD. The characters are archetypes already (Warden, crazily attached guard, heartless robot guard, in-over-his-[gigantic]-head accountant); the setting is infinitely large despite being contained: It’s a jail. It’s always a jail, and even when you leave (as in the time travel event), you want to come back—because you (the adventurer) belong there, fighting to prove yourself and to survive.

The tone of Super Jail! towards its characters is also funny, in an unexpected way: We feel sorry for them, and so does the universe of the show. It’s as if the Universal GM is throwing far-too-powerful enemies at them, then offering them some weird solace (sent on a dangerous undercover mission, the accountant accidentally becomes king of the inmates). Then, naturally, chaos overtakes the system and a generalized violence supersedes any sense of “storytelling”—which restores a grim, materialist feeling of “realism” to an otherwise 100% fantastic psychedeliascape.

Specifically, this approach worked very well for a scenario in which the PCs were dragged down into a terrible Alcazaba of the future-Imperial Roman-esque psychic police. To escape, the PCs had to overcome not just a set of crazed wardens/guards, but also the prisoners themselves (obsessed with a future-rugby analog called KLONK), as well as a generalized violence unleashed by any destabilization of the control regime. IT WAS SUPER EASY TO RUN THAT ONE.

I’ve been riding the train, thinking up different random tropes, and then considering how the 6 Archetypes would fill out a party. Consider something like the below:

THE OLD WEST (Young, AZ)

The HERO — May Granger— After her husband, the sheriff was shot and killed by as-of-yet-undiscovered desperados, May became the first female Sheriff of Young. She takes the job seriously, and the folk in her town, for the most part, take her the same. If there was one thing that was the most remarkable about her last year as sheriff it’s her apparent lack of effort to track down her husbands killers. Perhaps some things are best left buried.

PHYS: 3 QUIK: 2 INT: 2 WIS: 2 CHA: 2 LUK: 2

HP: 18
HS: 2
SS: 2

Weapon: the USFA Double Eagle, Government Issue.
Damage: 6
Rounds: 5

Quirk: Tenacious — as long as she’s at 1/4 HP or less, she adds 1 to her Hit and Shoot Score.

the MADMAN — Ross “Roscoe” Coanoke— Rumored to have somewhere between 1/64th and 1/2 Navajo blood in him, Roscoe’s made a living playing go-between between Natives and Settlers alike. Most notably, in addition to his bilingual bent, he’s also quick to end disputes with an even quicker draw. Having the favor of the Navajo in the area (to the North), gives Roscoe an uneasy leg up against any local lawmen.

PHYS: 2 QUIK: 3 INT: 2 WIS: 2 CHA: 2 LUK: 2

HP:12
HS: 1
SS: 3

Weapon(s): 2 Smith & Wesson Colts.
Damage: 6
Rounds: 6

Quirk: Crackshot — adds +2 to any die with an even number on a Shoot Roll.

the GENIUS — Tammy Wyndover— Raised in a proper English boarding school before becoming an orphan at 16, Tammy (originally Tabitha) came across the Atlantic in hopes of finding more open attitudes toward the non-whore, non-wife employment of women. She proved herself a capable rail-engineer in a then-burgeoning New York City, and came West with the railroads to oversee expansion to the coast. A falling out with her “partners” left her bitter and in Arizona, where’s she’s been ever since.

PHYS: 1 QUIK: 2 INT: 3 WIS: 3 CHA: 2 LUK: 2

HP: 6
HS: 1
SS: 0

Weapon: none.

Quirk(s): Old — She has -1 PHYS but +1 WIS; Jaded — She gets -1 to any active CHA roll, but +1 to any reactive CHA roll.

the SAINT — Gus Miller— Proprietor of the local saloon (no beds, no whores, but piano music every night), The Plank House, Gus was the first child ever born in Young, AZ. An older soul than a young fellow like him has a right to be, Gus took over they bottles of Whiskey from his father and the bottles of tinctures and salves from his mother. He’s a right church-going man (meaning the saloon’s closed Sunday) and has pined for quite a while over some lady in town, though no one’s gotten him to say who.

PHYS: 2 QUIK: 2 INT: 2 WIS: 4 CHA: 2 LUK: 2

HP: 12
HS: 2
SS: 0

Weapon: none.

Quirk: Humane — +1 Wisdom, but must make a Sanity check at witnessing a human death, and auto San loss at causing the death of a human.

the MIMIC — Violet— She says that her stay in Young was caused by a broken coach, but she’s been set up in the widow Dalton’s extra room for longer than it takes to fix a coach, and she’s been into the bed of (and purse of) too many of the men in town for anyone to think she didn’t have at least a temporary stay planned. 50% of the time she tells the men she’s a simple Parisian ex-patriot. The other half and she’s a top-shelf whore from New Orleans.

the HAPLESS — Lester Greenwood — He’s just arrived in town as the would-be school master of the soon-to-be-completed school house. He’s a hefty fellow, whose vices are gambling and custom suspenders he orders from a custom men’s shoppe out of Chicago. He was solidly the middle of his class of other educators back East, and is ambivalent about his new posting to Young. He hates the heat, but he also used to hate the rain, so…

PHYS: 2 QUIK: 2 INT: 2 WIS: 2 CHA: 2 LUK: 3

HP: 12
HS: 0
SS: 0

Weapon: none.

Quirk: Cowardly — must pass a WIS check in order to make any attack, but rolls an extra 1d6 on every Perception check.

THE COLD OPEN

The smoke had been visible from the Northwest for the better part of the morning, but no one was sure when it’d started. Every person asked said they allowed it was already visible by the time they woke. From the Southeast, the noon mail coach arrived right on time, carrying Lester Greenwood into town in addition to what letters and what not there were to deliver.

Lester stepped from the coach. He had been sweating for hours. There in the crossroads of Young, AZ, he could see a single man (Roscoe) dozing in the shade of a building on the West. On the East side of the street, a handful locals went about their business. One of them, though, was a woman (Violet) Lester couldn’t happen but take note of, and when she walked up the short steps of the Plank House, Lester realized it might just be time for a cool drink before settling in. He hitched his pants and hefted his case and crossed over.

Miss Tammy Wyndover was at just that moment stepping into Young’s Sheriff’s office. She’d been kept up the whole night but the strangest sounds and commotions, and she wanted to have May come have a look at the right-crazy tracks that’d been put down on her property before the rain washed ’em out and people swore she was crazy. May knew Tammy wasn’t one for crazy stories, but still, it seemed hard to understand what she was describing.

Roscoe stirred a bit as a fly crawled up his ear. Tipped his hat back and glared into the sun. 6 dark men stood not 50 feet away in the center of the road. No, not men. 6 dark figures. Shapes too dark for the middle of the day. A high-pitched whine started.

Gus put down the glass of water in front of Lester, and then winced at the high whine that began. He cocked his head and stepped out past the bar and to the door. Violet turned from her drink to the window, and Lester from his drink to Violet’s back.

May led Tammy back out into the sun just in time to see Roscoe stand up on the other side of the six black figures.